Spring is an appropriate time to look ahead at what's on the horizon and at what we're building now that will impact us for years to come.
Our annual call for proposals closed earlier this month, and I thank each of you who submitted a proposal for your interest in collaborating with us and in leveraging our capabilities for your research. Our team will invest hundreds of hours over the next several months to coordinate the external peer reviews and allocate resources for those proposals that are accepted for fiscal year 2013. It's exciting to see what new science is being proposed.
EMSL has been proactively building teams over the past few months and recently announced our new team science projects. One of those projects – the Pore-scale Modeling Challenge – is a great example of community-driven science. It was clear, through many conversations and a workshop we held last summer, the scientific community needed assistance in benchmarking field-scale models for predicting the impact of industrial and agricultural contaminants on the environment. I'm eager to see how this effort moves forward and the value we can add to this community.
We're also pulling together components of the biology community for our annual User Meeting, scheduled for Aug. 14 and 15. We already have a strong line-up of plenary speakers and are organizing three separate workshops focused on transcriptomics, microscopy and mass spectrometry. I hope you're able to join us and spread the word to your colleagues that the user meeting is open to non-users as well. Our goal is to encourage strong dialogue, highlight how EMSL capabilities have been and can be utilized, and build engagement with our users.
- Allison
Postdoc award process open. EMSL is accepting nominations for its M.T. Thomas Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Achievement. This year's nominations are due May 17. More information is online.
Share your science successes. Do you want your EMSL-related research featured on our website and presented to the Department of Energy's Office of Biological & Environmental Research? Contact Loel Kathmann, EMSL Communications, with the details of your published EMSL-related research.
Wiley Visiting Scientist Program deadlines are quarterly. EMSL is accepting applications for the Wiley Visiting Scientist Program with the next deadline of April 30. In addition to conducting their own research, Wiley visiting scientists are expected to actively contribute to the success of EMSL beyond their own specific research projects.
Thank you external peer reviewers. Peer review is an important part of EMSL's annual call for user proposals process. External peer reviewers help evaluate the user-submitted proposals vying for EMSL resources. Learn more about external peer reviewers and see the list of our fiscal 2011 peer reviewers.
Watch EMSL on YouTube. As part of the iDirector series, EMSL Director Allison Campbell talked with EMSL Scientist Tamas Varga about the laboratory's diffraction and x-ray tomography instruments and his research. Allison also spoke with Scott Baker, EMSL's interim lead for the Biological Interactions & Dynamics science theme, about using fungus to convert biomass into fuel and the study of biology at EMSL. Watch [EMSL's YouTube channel] to learn more about x-ray tomography and biology studies.
Registration is open for the NUFO Annual Users' Meeting in Santa Fe, NM, June 18-20. NUFO is the National User Facility Organization. Register for the meeting.
Plan to attend Surface Analysis '12, an interdisciplinary symposium to discuss advances in and applications of surface analysis, June 19-22 at EMSL in Richland, Wash. Learn more about Surface Analysis '12.
For the first and second quarters of fiscal 2012, a total of 560 users benefitted from EMSL capabilities and expertise. This total includes 418 onsite and 142 remote users.
To learn about the achievements of EMSL in the second quarter of fiscal year 2012, visit our News Center.
User spotlight: glass from the past
Scientists are using EMSL's local electrode atom probe, known commercially as LEAP, to study pieces of ancient Roman glass to better understand how glass corrodes over time. Insight from the international study could be used to improve the long-term safety of radioactive waste stored in glass. Read the full story.
ARRA funds support new discoveries
EMSL used American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, funds to augment its state-of-the-art capabilities. Among the enhancements are Barracuda computing clusters, which scientists are using to develop new software solutions to better predict the properties of matter — read more. ARRA funds also purchased EMSL's new aberration-corrected scanning/transmission electron microscope, or S/TEM. Scientists are using S/TEM to better understand how microbes can be used to remediate heavy-metal-contaminated sites around the world — read more.
NWChem: a team approach
An international consortium uses teamwork and collaboration to enhance EMSL's NWChem, the Department of Energy's premier open-source computational chemistry software package. A worldwide team of users have contributed many improvements to NWChem to give it unique capabilities no other software system offers. Read the full story.
Don't miss EMSL's 2012 user meeting
The EMSL User Meeting will be held Aug. 14 and 15 in Richland, Wash. Focused on biology, there will be two featured speakers: Jay Keasling, CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and Bill Margolin, professor in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School. The agenda includes multiple science lectures; workshops related to microscopy, mass spectrometry, and cell isolation and systems analysis; and a poster session and student poster competition. Registration will open later this spring and will be announced through EMSL's e-mail news list. Subscribe now.
Science highlights
Check out EMSL's Science Highlights. Here are some recent write-ups:
- Angling for Answers – Using capabilities available only at EMSL, scientists are uncovering new details about the structure and interactions in molecular monolayers and films.
- Not Fade Away – Using EMSL's in situ transmission electron microscopy capabilities, scientists are edging closer to pinpointing the atomic-level changes that lead to anode failure in Li-ion batteries.
- Water, Sun, Energy – A novel method created by an EMSL user team for producing a highly reactive titania, or TiO2, surface is featured on the cover of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
- Shedding Light on Photosynthesis – A part of EMSL's Membrane Biology Scientific Grand Challenge, researchers are able to monitor protein expression levels in a cell as they change over time and in response to external stimuli.
- Sticking Around – New findings reported by an EMSL user team in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may explain why the abundance of secondary organic aerosols has been significantly underestimated by currently accepted air quality and climate models.
- Attention to Detail – Features now available in EMSL's spectroscopy capability are ideal for characterizing surfaces and interfaces, and details are reported in The Journal of Chemical Physics.
If you have feedback – ideas, suggestions, questions – about EMSL's The Molecular Bond, please address those to EMSL Communications team at emslcom@pnnl.gov.
In the Next Issue
EMSL Director Allison Campbell's interview with EMSL user and Wiley Visiting Scientist Ron Heeren about his experience collaborating with EMSL in development of the world's first C60 secondary ion Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer, or C60 SIMS FTICR MS, will be featured in the next issue of The Molecular Bond.
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